Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit
by asomyrcal
Summary: Complete: One-Shot - Lifetimes later in another city, he finds his familiar stranger. IMPLIED AU.


**Title: **Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit*  
**Fandom**: 07-Ghost  
**Pairing(s)**: Barely-there Ayanami and Hyuuga, if you squint.  
**Warnings**: Implied alternate reality, but best left for the reader to interpret.

**Synopsis**: Lifetimes later in another city, he finds his familiar stranger.

He walks past, a silent silver-haired ghost in ebony on streets that are too full of people, faces he doesn't see in the gentle blanket of snow that seems to have wrapped everything in this city in pale white. The coat is heavy on his shoulders, a weight that seems all too familiar and foreign at the same time – it seems like a lifetime ago that a different shade of black and gold rested on that rigid back.

Thoughts tumble almost playfully in his mind; they distract him and it shows in those crystalline violet as that man weaves through the streets and the people that make up its all too colorful tapestry.

The shadow that suddenly appears in his way doesn't register until it's too late, he can't stop the momentum that has carried him so far. The two of them collide, and now-startled violet looks up into an almost inhuman crimson -

_- and he saw him lying there in tattered black, the light in those crimson eyes fading with every passing moment..._

He steps back, undeniably startled by the sudden contact and a memory that shouldn't have existed in his time.

It is somehow familiar, this scene, this moment, and in a blink of an eye the existence of the people around them seem to fade away. He has seen this before, has experienced it – and his body knows – even though it shouldn't have been possible. It is a dark-haired stranger that stands in front of him, blood red eyes peering from behind tinted glasses, but yet there is something about the man that speaks to him.

There is something about the wry grin on that man's face, his lean form and the hands that are now resting against too stiff shoulders, hands callused from years of work not from a sword – he wonders, where that thought came from, because no-one in their reality actually carries them any more – and it makes him wonder, just where has he seen this familiar stranger?

_- that man is caramel and chocolate and bittersweet wine all mixed together when their lips press against each other's, and Ayanami doesn't know how he has forgotten._

He doesn't know when that man's fingers have found their way to his lips, bare thumb brushing over cracked lips almost gently. It's as if the world only revolves around the two of them and nothing else, and he doesn't know why the feeling that bubbles up in his chest immobilizes him the way it does.

A part of him wants to step back and pretend that he has never run into this stranger who makes his throat constrict almost painfully at memories that don't seem to be his.

Another part of him just doesn't want to move, there is something comforting about the warm hand cupping his cheek – perhaps it's because the weather has grown just a little colder and the wind a little stronger – that he doesn't want to let go off again.

Again...?

Then there is the image of this familiar stranger fallen to the ground, crumpled there unmoving in deep, bloody crimson and he starts again, heart hammering in his chest at the carnage he sees only when he stares into that man's eyes.

He steps back, pulling away this time, and the stranger before him doesn't try to stop him. The now icy wind feels all the more acute with his warm hand gone from his chilly skin, and the incessant chatter of the crowd around him threatens to drown out everything else like a roar of a tidal wave.

His crimson-eyed stranger doesn't move a muscle, merely standing there with that oh-so-familiar smile on his face and dark glasses a little lopsided on the bridge of his nose.

The silver-haired man turned; it was almost abrupt, almost fearful, the way he too-swiftly pulled away, attempting to fade back into the crowd that surrounded the two of them. There is something in those violet eyes, little cracks running under a facade that fit into place too perfectly on his pale face.

He allows the tide of people to swallow him, wants a shield from that all too piercing gaze, and he tries to simply walk away, but yet his feet refuse to move -

_- it's not the first time he has to walk away from a scene he's seen before, but yet he couldn't move, couldn't walk away all those lifetimes ago, not with his subordinate lying there in a pool of blood and - _

"Aya-tan!"

He doesn't understand. It is a name that resonates deep within his soul, he has been called that before and he does not understand how _that _man could still be alive because he saw, he remembers he did, remembers the strangely painful realization that the one person who had always watched his back was gone and -

Suddenly there is a warm body pressed against his back and arms wrapped tightly around him, and Ayanami freezes mid-step. His familiar stranger has caught up to him, and suddenly it all comes back to him in a flood of memories.

His heart catches in his throat, and suddenly he finds it hard to swallow.

There are caramel tainted lips brushing against his ear and warm breaths against his skin, and he finally remembers with startling clarity – it should be impossible, but yet that man is here in this lifetime, and he remembers everything. He knows his name, he knows his rank in a reality where neither are part of the military, he knows why and how he knows this stranger, his stranger with blood red eyes and that almost lop-sided smile.

A hand reaches up, tentative and halting. For the first time in forever he feels a thread of fear that isn't supposed to exist at all, a thread that vanishes as soon as cold fingers come to rest against that man's warm skin. He remembers who he is _(subordinate friend bodyguard stranger)_ and he knows why his body remembers.

Hyuuga is real, flesh and blood and caramel scented breath on the wind.

He is real and it is all that matters.

The arms wrapped around him tighten just the slightest, as if the man standing behind him were afraid to let him go. Maybe he is, because so long ago he was the one who had been stolen away.

"I've found you."

It's almost as if another lifetime passes them by, just the two of them on a busy bustling street in another city in a silence that exists only to the two of them.

"I know."

**END**

**A/N:** I don't entire know how this came about, honestly. I'd been toying with the idea of them in a another lifetime (something like Teito and Mikage's relationship) and neither truly remembers, but the fic itself also can be interpreted with Hyuuga's death and Ayanami's leaving. In short, it's up to you, which way you want to see it.

Title translates to 'everything changes, nothing perishes'.


End file.
